📝 Staff meeting brief — Writing observations
For whoever is running the meeting. About 12 minutes. Print it and talk from it; do not read it out. Have a tablet with the Staff Portal open.
The aim is not more observations. It is better ones, written while the moment is fresh — what the child actually did and said, linked to the right statement, with a next step somebody will actually do.
Run it at every site. Repeat it for new starters at induction.
1. Ovivio is still the record 2 min
So nobody thinks there is now a second place observations live.
Say
“Nothing about Ovivio has changed. Every observation still goes into Ovivio. This is a page that helps you
write it, and then tells you exactly what to put in each part of Ovivio.”
- It saves nothing. Close the page and it is gone. So copy everything into Ovivio before you close it — the page warns you if you try to leave without copying.
- There is no box for the child’s name. That is on purpose. You choose the child in Ovivio, where their record already is.
On shared room tablets: whatever you last copied stays on the tablet’s clipboard until something else is
copied. Paste it into Ovivio, then carry on — do not leave an observation sitting there at the end of the day.
2. Two ways in 1 min
- From a statement. In EYFS moments & observations, every statement has a 📝 Use for an observation button. The page opens with that statement already filled in.
- From something you just saw. On the Staff Hub, 📝 Write an observation. Write it first; the page then suggests which statements it shows.
Say
“Most good observations start with something you saw, not with a statement you went looking for. So the second
way is the one I would like you to use most.”
3. Walk through it on the tablet 4 min
Open the page from the Staff Hub and write one together, about something that happened today.
- What happened. What the child did and said, not what you think it means. Their actual words, in quotation marks.
- The examples are a guide, not something to copy. If what you write is too close to one, the page says so.
- Suggest statements from what I wrote. Pick the child’s age group, press it, and tap the ones the observation really shows. It is a guess from your words — check every one. Search if it misses.
- Emerging, Developing or Secure for each statement. Decide now, while you remember the moment. It is the same choice Ovivio asks for.
- Next steps for this child. Written as what you will put in place — the environment, your support, their interests. “Put scissors in the playdough”, not “she will cut along a line”. Add more than one if you need to, each with its area.
- Now put it into Ovivio. Press your nursery’s Ovivio button — it opens in a new tab — and go down Ovivio’s form in the order the page shows, copying each part across.
4. What a good observation looks like 2 min
Short, ordinary, and about this child.
- Most days deserve one line. A long observation is not a better one. Staff who think every observation has to be an essay write fewer.
- Ordinary moments count most — lunch, coats, tidy-up, the water tray. That is where nearly all of a child’s learning happens.
- Their words, exactly. “I did it myself!” tells more than “she showed independence”.
Worth practising. Read out a one-line example from the matrix, then ask two people to write what
their key child did in a similar moment this week. Compare. The point is that the two are different —
five children’s files that read the same are what an inspector notices.
5. Questions to invite 3 min
Ask these rather than “any questions?” — that gets silence.
- “What stops you writing an observation at the time?” Usually time or the tablet. Both are worth hearing.
- “What did your key child do today that you have not written down?”
- “What is a next step you have written that nobody then did?” A next step is only useful if it changes tomorrow.
Close with: “Write it while it’s fresh, in the child’s words, then put it in Ovivio. One line is fine.”